Allied talks plot world carve-up¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter digest, drawn from a December 1943 issue of Socialist Appeal, offers a Marxist analysis of the Allied conferences at Tehran and Moscow, arguing that these diplomatic manoeuvres represent not a path to lasting peace but a cynical imperialist carve-up of post-war Europe, enabled by the Stalinist bureaucracy’s shared fear of socialist revolution.
The core argument is that the unexpected military resilience of the Soviet Union, combined with mounting war-weariness and the threat of revolutionary upheaval across occupied Europe, has forced British and American imperialists to seek a temporary compromise with Stalin. This compromise, however, is founded on a common class interest: the suppression of the European masses. The text contends that Stalin fears the socialist revolution as much as Churchill and Roosevelt, making the Kremlin bureaucracy the only force capable of assisting the imperialists in smashing popular movements. The Tehran agreement is thus exposed as a deal to decide the fate of Germany and its satellites, with the Stalinist bureaucracy demanding enormous reparations in return for sabotaging revolution. The chapter draws a direct historical parallel to the Versailles peace treaty, arguing that draconian retribution against Germany will merely sow the seeds of a future war, just as Versailles laid the basis for the present conflict.
Key claims are supported by evidence of ongoing power politics. The text cites a Times editorial acknowledging the 1940 Soviet frontiers, interpreting this as British imperialism’s concession to Stalin’s territorial demands. It points to Anglo-American pressure on Turkey to enter the war and rumours of negotiations with the fascist regimes of Salazar in Portugal and Franco in Spain, arguing that such alliances prove the “democracies” are guided not by principle but by the relative strength of the contending imperialist giants. The chapter also predicts a strategy to persuade German generals and industrialists to remove Hitler and submit to the victors, mirroring the Italian coup against Mussolini. A lengthy quotation from The Times is deployed to illustrate the imperialist vision of a joint Anglo-Russian hegemony over a capitalist Europe, a “solution” the text dismisses as inherently unstable.
The polemic is directed against multiple targets. Harry Pollitt and the Communist Party are ridiculed as boot-licking apologists who hailed the Moscow agreement as greater than the Russian Revolution. The Stalinist bureaucracy is denounced for betraying the international working class. The central polemic, however, is against the entire framework of capitalist power politics and the national state system. The chapter concludes by asserting that the calculations of Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill will be overturned by the revolutionary struggles already erupting in Poland, Greece, and Yugoslavia, arguing that the masses will ultimately fight for a united socialist states of Europe.